Osman Hamdi

b. 1842 — d. 1910

Osman Hamdi Bey was an Ottoman statesman, intellectual, art expert and also a prominent and pioneering Turkish painter. He was also an accomplished archaeologist, and is considered as the pioneer of the museum curator's profession in Turkey. He was the founder of Istanbul Archaeology Museums and of İstanbul Academy of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi in Turkish), known today as the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts. French orientalist painters Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger were his teachers, whose influence is apparent in most of the paintings Osman Hamdi done.